The thing that struck me the most from this was that it was all you throughout the whole thing. Your husband (ex?) was only mentioned way into Covid when he was furloughed and making the Jenga game. Up to that point, I thought you were a single mother.
People don’t understand that life isn’t a fairy tale. Sometimes women/mothers HAVE to work… it’s very hard, even with a partner.
I do mention "Dad" earlier on, but yes, I noticed that too! I think one reason, and something that kind of threw me for a loop at the time, is that early motherhood can be such a visceral, physical experience in ways that early fatherhood is not.
I feel this so hard. I refused to live it and made other choices, but still had similar experiences. My maternity leave was paid but unofficial and I could barely stand when I had to drag myself into work, 90 mins on the subway. My department was very understanding but the demands are still there. To this day, I still feel so strongly that nobody cares about mothers. All of the medical care centers on the baby’s vital signs and other metrics….and nothing more. It’s a cruel cruel system.
Well said! We "care" about mothers as symbols of fertility and traditional womanhood, but there is no real regard for our experiences or contributions.
The end result was that I only had a single child. Funny how the subject of women reproducing has been a topic in this election cycle…as though women are simply failing to reproduce instead of being crushed in a system that does not value them at all.
This is a beautiful piece, true and hard. Our culture isn’t set up for motherhood, or caring for each other, or even to admit and cater to any biological human need (and there are a lot of need in addition to motherhood). I especially appreciated the ending—hope in the hard parts. ❤️
It's so true. I actually loved how early motherhood reminded me of my animal nature, something we've tried so hard to distance ourselves from as a species. I don't miss the constant onslaught of fluids, per se, but I do miss that bodily connection.
Thank you for writing this Kerala…it sums up our insane world perfectly. It’s so sad that it has come to this. My children are 4, 6 and 8, and I dream of moving to land and home-schooling them and allowing them to enjoy their childhoods on a planet heaving under the weight of overconsumption and ecological destruction (I.e. before they have awareness of the devastating reality of their inheritance). Us humans have really messed things up. I don’t know if this fate was ‘predetermined’ or inevitable or whatever…but I do know that all we have left now is to love each other while we still can. When I play ‘games’ like Jenga with my kids now…I realise that these micro moments of love and connection are the meaning of life x
Thank you for sharing -- you are absolutely spot on with your assessment of our world's very warped priorities. Thank you for making me think and question. Our world is not set up for motherhood at all - You are an amazing mom,
Reading this made me think…. It’s funny: I was homeschooled, and incredibly sheltered. My mother’s sheltering meant my first birth (in 2020) was my first encounter with sexual violence - obstetrics never misses, does it? I had gotten my BA and MA but I was very young for a 29 year old, and my naivete meant I really lapped up a lot of neoliberal propaganda (the world is so much better than it was; us young people are so well positioned to make it even better; etc). I worked at a private foundation that told us we were special and paid for our lunch every day, so I was actually shocked when in 2021, when I and my 6 month old got COVID, they told me I had to suck it up and keep working. After all, they’d told me I was special.
In hindsight, I understand she (for context: Puerto Rican; not at all sheltered herself) was trying hard to protect me from the things that had happened to her. And I understood the deep wisdom of my titis and other female ancestors that much better; what I had thought was a kind of delusional clinging to faith, as a flippant and ignorant teen, I learned was a technology of survival. I think that lack of calibration between my expectations and the reality of American motherhood did come as quite a shock, but it had to happen; the apocalypse is never pleasant.
Society, especially ours, really isn't set up to support moms, despite all of the pro-family and pro-children rhetoric. Thank you for putting words to experiences so many of us have felt or lived through.
Kerala, thank you for writing with such clarity and specificity about the cruel and inhumane ways our work culture treats mothers of young children. This is why I knew I would not be able to continue working full-time after having kids, and I think if being home with them wasn't an option, I probably wouldn't have had children at all. I don't have the constitution to be a good mom and a good employee at the same time, nor the resources when it comes to childcare options and fallback plans.
I just wrote a piece about feeling invisible as a stay-at-home parent which is kind of the other side of the coin to what mothers working outside the home experience. The importance of mothers care work, even their identity as mothers, is expected to be "invisible" at the workplace, compartmentalized, while those who are providing care for children are "invisible" unless they're out there earning. Even with the small amount of paid work I still do, I remember looking around a lunch room once at a conference I was speaking at, having slept only 3 hours the night before, and noting that I was the only one there who had young children at home. And after the lack of any empathy I received about giving a full day of presentations without a full night's sleep, I understood exactly why.
Yes, absolutely. We are rendered invisible at home and relegated to the sidelines at work. And with the way work is currently structured, no one has the constitution to be a good mom and good employee -- we often end up feeling that we're failing at both. The vast majority of the highest earning, highest "achieving" moms only got to where they are because of (under)paid caregivers and domestic laborers.
Dayum, Kerala. This is such a beautiful, heart- wrenching exposition of large and complex broken structures made so poignant by your personal experience.
Beautiful and true, as always. Have you read Renegade Mothering by Janelle Hanchett? (https://www.renegademothering.com). She writes about the realities of motherhood as someone who had four children in the U.S. and then moved with her family to the Netherlands, where families are so much better supported and parents get real leave and even actual help when babies are born. Clearly, we need to change some major systems in the U.S. — but what will it take? At this point, it's hard to imagine that ever happening.
Thank you for writing this. I have lived this. I have felt this.
The thing that struck me the most from this was that it was all you throughout the whole thing. Your husband (ex?) was only mentioned way into Covid when he was furloughed and making the Jenga game. Up to that point, I thought you were a single mother.
People don’t understand that life isn’t a fairy tale. Sometimes women/mothers HAVE to work… it’s very hard, even with a partner.
I do mention "Dad" earlier on, but yes, I noticed that too! I think one reason, and something that kind of threw me for a loop at the time, is that early motherhood can be such a visceral, physical experience in ways that early fatherhood is not.
I feel this so hard. I refused to live it and made other choices, but still had similar experiences. My maternity leave was paid but unofficial and I could barely stand when I had to drag myself into work, 90 mins on the subway. My department was very understanding but the demands are still there. To this day, I still feel so strongly that nobody cares about mothers. All of the medical care centers on the baby’s vital signs and other metrics….and nothing more. It’s a cruel cruel system.
Well said! We "care" about mothers as symbols of fertility and traditional womanhood, but there is no real regard for our experiences or contributions.
The end result was that I only had a single child. Funny how the subject of women reproducing has been a topic in this election cycle…as though women are simply failing to reproduce instead of being crushed in a system that does not value them at all.
This is a beautiful piece, true and hard. Our culture isn’t set up for motherhood, or caring for each other, or even to admit and cater to any biological human need (and there are a lot of need in addition to motherhood). I especially appreciated the ending—hope in the hard parts. ❤️
It's so true. I actually loved how early motherhood reminded me of my animal nature, something we've tried so hard to distance ourselves from as a species. I don't miss the constant onslaught of fluids, per se, but I do miss that bodily connection.
Thank you for writing this Kerala…it sums up our insane world perfectly. It’s so sad that it has come to this. My children are 4, 6 and 8, and I dream of moving to land and home-schooling them and allowing them to enjoy their childhoods on a planet heaving under the weight of overconsumption and ecological destruction (I.e. before they have awareness of the devastating reality of their inheritance). Us humans have really messed things up. I don’t know if this fate was ‘predetermined’ or inevitable or whatever…but I do know that all we have left now is to love each other while we still can. When I play ‘games’ like Jenga with my kids now…I realise that these micro moments of love and connection are the meaning of life x
Indeed! Micro moments of love and connection -- beautifully put!
Thank you for sharing -- you are absolutely spot on with your assessment of our world's very warped priorities. Thank you for making me think and question. Our world is not set up for motherhood at all - You are an amazing mom,
Reading this made me think…. It’s funny: I was homeschooled, and incredibly sheltered. My mother’s sheltering meant my first birth (in 2020) was my first encounter with sexual violence - obstetrics never misses, does it? I had gotten my BA and MA but I was very young for a 29 year old, and my naivete meant I really lapped up a lot of neoliberal propaganda (the world is so much better than it was; us young people are so well positioned to make it even better; etc). I worked at a private foundation that told us we were special and paid for our lunch every day, so I was actually shocked when in 2021, when I and my 6 month old got COVID, they told me I had to suck it up and keep working. After all, they’d told me I was special.
In hindsight, I understand she (for context: Puerto Rican; not at all sheltered herself) was trying hard to protect me from the things that had happened to her. And I understood the deep wisdom of my titis and other female ancestors that much better; what I had thought was a kind of delusional clinging to faith, as a flippant and ignorant teen, I learned was a technology of survival. I think that lack of calibration between my expectations and the reality of American motherhood did come as quite a shock, but it had to happen; the apocalypse is never pleasant.
Society, especially ours, really isn't set up to support moms, despite all of the pro-family and pro-children rhetoric. Thank you for putting words to experiences so many of us have felt or lived through.
Kerala, thank you for writing with such clarity and specificity about the cruel and inhumane ways our work culture treats mothers of young children. This is why I knew I would not be able to continue working full-time after having kids, and I think if being home with them wasn't an option, I probably wouldn't have had children at all. I don't have the constitution to be a good mom and a good employee at the same time, nor the resources when it comes to childcare options and fallback plans.
I just wrote a piece about feeling invisible as a stay-at-home parent which is kind of the other side of the coin to what mothers working outside the home experience. The importance of mothers care work, even their identity as mothers, is expected to be "invisible" at the workplace, compartmentalized, while those who are providing care for children are "invisible" unless they're out there earning. Even with the small amount of paid work I still do, I remember looking around a lunch room once at a conference I was speaking at, having slept only 3 hours the night before, and noting that I was the only one there who had young children at home. And after the lack of any empathy I received about giving a full day of presentations without a full night's sleep, I understood exactly why.
Yes, absolutely. We are rendered invisible at home and relegated to the sidelines at work. And with the way work is currently structured, no one has the constitution to be a good mom and good employee -- we often end up feeling that we're failing at both. The vast majority of the highest earning, highest "achieving" moms only got to where they are because of (under)paid caregivers and domestic laborers.
Thanks for how beautifully you have written this. I've been there.
Dayum, Kerala. This is such a beautiful, heart- wrenching exposition of large and complex broken structures made so poignant by your personal experience.
Thank you Holly! I got very emotional while writing this but it was cathartic, too!
Beautiful and true, as always. Have you read Renegade Mothering by Janelle Hanchett? (https://www.renegademothering.com). She writes about the realities of motherhood as someone who had four children in the U.S. and then moved with her family to the Netherlands, where families are so much better supported and parents get real leave and even actual help when babies are born. Clearly, we need to change some major systems in the U.S. — but what will it take? At this point, it's hard to imagine that ever happening.